Ask HN: New here – Why can only I see my submitted posts? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: New here – Why can only I see my submitted posts?

4 pointsestheryo15 comments

Hi HN,

I’m relatively new here and recently submitted several posts, but I noticed that only I can see them. They don’t appear to be visible to other users, and I’m not sure why. I’m hoping to get some guidance from the community on what might be going wrong.

Here are some details:

• The posts appear in my account’s submission history. • When logged in, I can see my posts, but they are not visible in the “new” section from other accounts. • I believe my posts adhere to the community guidelines.

I would really appreciate any insights or advice from more experienced members. Thank you for your help!

View on HN

There are numerous reasons why posts are not publicly shown. Email hn@ycombinator.com to ask about yours if you like. You can enable "showdead" in your profile settings to be shown these hidden posts and submissions.

If your post is not marked as [dead] then it's mostly the reason that you're promoting only your own content. I faced the same challenge and got to know after email them.

Thanks for the reminder! How does HN determine if the content is self-promotion? I did post a blog about our product, and it was visible. However, when I submitted other content unrelated to self-promotion, it got hidden. So, I’m a bit confused.

Since I can't see your post, can't share my opinion about that. In my case it was not shown because of posting the content from same domain as previous post. Say, if you used medium for your self-promotion content, if you post medium again (non-promotion) it doesn't show to others.

Some of your posts are marked as [dead], usually meaning that the content has some issue. I've seen posts that are dead for multiple reasons ranging from off-topic to overly-biased to too much self promotion. There's guidelines that your posts might not pass. To check, see:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you feel that your posts were unfairly flagged, you can try contacting the admins/mods.

Thank you for the clarification! I don’t see any of my submitted but invisible posts marked as [dead]. Is this something visible to me?

I’ve already read the guidelines, but I will review them again more carefully. If necessary, I’ll reach out to the admins/mods to resolve this. Appreciate your help!

> Is this something visible to me?

Yes, I think so. In your profile settings, there should be a "show dead" option. Select "yes" then update the settings. I know it will show other's dead posts, but I dont know if it shows a user their own dead posts. (Luckily, I haven't had a dead post yet, so I can't verify.)

After updating, if you look at the "new" tab, you'll see dead and/or flagged posts. It doesn't say why, but it will show [dead] and [flagged]. If your post was flagged, it's most likely by users. Dead means killed by admins/mods, sometimes due to flags.

Side note: With "show dead" on, you'll see the dead flag, but will still be able to click the submitted link. I think that's for transparency so we can see what the admins block. There's also a vouch button for dead posts. But don't use that unless you are really sure about the author and/or content of the post. I don't think you can vouch for your own posts, either.

Good luck! I hope everything works out.

Interestingly, in "my" flagged posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/flagged?id=mstaoru) I see one post (from 2017) by another user which has no upvotes.

Thank you, I understand now. Enabling “showdead” in my profile settings shows the [dead] tag. Thanks for your patience as I figure this out.

Your account is 3 months old, your first comment is from 12 days ago, and your first submission was 48 days ago. It's likely you got caught up in a spam filter especially since your first submissions were for a site that (as noted by others) is auto-killed, and, at the time, from a young but unused account.

Email the mods (contact link at the bottom of this page) to get it sorted it.

Thank you for the explanation. It seems I need to engage more actively with the community.

A hint: "engage more actively with the community" will be silently translated to "I‘m spamming" by a considerable part of said community.

It may not be what you meant, it may be unfair, and it certainly isn‘t equivalent in a strict semantic analysis of the sentences.

But it is still true.

Two of the stories you submitted are from web domains that appear to be heavily scrutinized. Both hashnode and towarddatascience seem to be auto-killed by default.

Looking at the history of hashnode posts it is pretty obvious why. The first page when I click “past” only goes back four days and many of the submissions are “escorts in Lahore” type posts.

Why Towarddatascience is autokilled was not obvious but I suspect there might have been a run of low quality or spam or both.

My advice is to find better stories to submit. HN is an unusual place and getting the hang of it usually takes a while…good luck.

—— addendum

you say from other accounts

Having multiple accounts can create hard to resist opportunities to behave contrary to the spirit of HN.

You probably won’t be clever enough to game the system because the software and staff reflect a lot of experience.

Thank you for the insight and advice. I initially created multiple accounts to confirm if my posts were visible to others, but I understand now how that can be problematic. I appreciate the reminder and will be more mindful going forward. Thanks again for your help!

welcome to the club. post some random shit from ars technica and you're fine, post anything that may look like self promotion, even if its not, and the kill-bots strike.

Thanks for the heads-up! It’s good to know how the system works. I’ll try to avoid anything that looks like self-promotion. Appreciate the advice!

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